At 4:00 pm EST, Joe Dooley and I are going live to discuss the things we read over the past week as we are reading through the Bible. We will be on the line for 20 minutes to give some practical insights for families for the reading from the past week in Joshua and Luke.

Right now I’m in a convoy of three vans loaded with men headed to “The Life of a Shepherd.” in Montgomery Alabama. This is a marvelous opportunity to equip men from our local church and strengthen churches around the nation.

Our mission: We are going to state again that the Word of God alone is sufficient for the government of the church of Jesus Christ. We pray that this conviction is the legacy we will leave in the hearts of men and women.

Other matters:

Our work continues to be focused on showing how the church and the family are brought into Biblical order. Holy families and churches are vastly important. We continue to seek ways to spread the message of the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life. Here are some of the fronts we are working on this year:

1. Read 2018. We launched a new book, Journey Through the Bible and encouraged families to read the Bible in 2018. 625 signed up and approximately 30 pastors are joining me on a webinar each Friday to discuss what we read. https://read2018.com/

2. Life of a Shepherd Conference, Mar 15, Montgomery, Ala – There will be approx. 120 in attendance.

Topics to be addressed:

Setting Unfinished Things In OrderElders Who Excel Still MoreDefining Elder AuthorityWhere Are We Going To Get Future Elders?Start To Finish Process For Nominating And Qualifying EldersNavigating The Landmines Of Shared LeadershipHow Do Elders Help A Church Not Bite And DevourHow Should Elders Deal With Pornography In The ChurchThe Family Life Of An ElderThe Importance Of Vocational EldersHow Deacons Can Help Their EldersHow Elders Should Care For DeaconsQuestion And Answer PanelFaithful Shepherds, Ezek 34

3. Church leaders meetings 2018. So far this year, I have conducted meetings with pastors in our network inIndy, St Louis, Chicago, Calif, Montgomery. In the third quarter of this year, I plan to do the same in Colorado and Texas.

4. Website modifications – to make our website more information based – characterizing our convictions on the main page and behind it, we are improving our web presence. Here is a mock-up sample, https://neifert.xyz/ncfic-vue/ We plan to launch the new version in the next couple of months.

5. Getting the Picture Right – In the summer we are conducting a marriage conference or couples married seven years and under, June 22-23, location, Brown’s barn.

The father that Asaph is advocating in Psalm 78 is a man of history and he tells the stories. He inclines his ears to “the things our fathers told us.”

In God’s economy, what fathers say matters. The things they say are represented in v2 as “dark sayings of old”, and “a parable”, which means, “a story from the past.” The drama of redemption in human history contained in the stories from the past are important to men who are teaching the next generation. It is not the next new thing that matters. Its not the next new movie that is important to the health of the next generation, but the stories of old.

Fathers are God’s appointed historians for the next generation. When fathers do their jobs well, their children will have a sense of their place in history.

They have two major advantages.

First, their children can look back on 6,000 years of history and see God’s power. They have dozens of real life examples in history to draw from. They are not alone in their troubles. Nor are they alone in their deliverances. One of the blessings of being “the people of God” is that we know who we are because we can recall the things our fathers told us about the past. Our faith is a historical one. Children need to learn history under the teaching of their fathers.

This is why the prophet Joel says, “Tell your children about it,, Let your children tell their children, And their children another generation (Joel 1:3)

Second, their children can look back on their family history to see vivid illustrations of God’s sustaining power in times of trial. For example, when Hezekiah recovered from his sickness, (Isa 38) he reflects on it. It hits him that this sickness had a purpose. It actually had a positive purpose for children. It isa picture of an honest man before God, living according to the knowledge he has. He is in pain, interacting with God in the midst of the difficulty. This is one of the blessings of the Bible. It gives us pictures of real man real problems and real consequences of real sin. It shows them in joy and sorrow in sickness and in health and riches and property. Everyone has troubles, and everyone learns something from their troubles. Troubles always change you. There is a process that you go through in your thinking and feeling and acting. There are conclusions that you arrive at. Here is one of Hezekiah’s conclusions,

“The living, the living man, he shall praise You, As I do this day; The father shall make known Your truth to the children” (Isa 38:19).

It is important that we know how our troubles have changed us. Fathers should seek an understanding of history on three levels: biblical history, church history, and family history. The most important kind of history is biblical history, because it contains everything that is profitable for life and godliness, and is really the only sure basis for teaching the other two.

If men would break bad patterns from the past, they need a strong focus on communicating the ancient words to his children that God has delivered to His people.

Fathers are God’s appointed historians. A brilliant example of this is seen two years after the Exodus from Egypt, when Moses was reporting on the status of the households of Jacob in Numbers 1-3. These people were historically astute enough to recite their family history. The story shows that Moses carefully documented the numbers of fighting men over age 20 who came from each of the sons of Jacob. It is thrilling to notice that each son of Jacob had 30,000 to 75,000 fighting men alive at the time of the Exodus. This shows how powerful one household can be in future generations.

For example, He gathered the entire congregation of Israel, and they “recited their ancestry by families, by their fathers houses, according to the number of the names, from twenty years old and above, each one individually” (Numbers 1:18-19).

An ancient book

It is noteworthy that God wanted His people to have an ancient book with time worn stories. God wants us to ponder lessons from the past. This history is meant to be in the mouths of our fathers. God is commanding them to use “the things our fathers told us”, to guide them in the future. He calls his people to look back to a standard. From these stories we are charged to learn lessons and bring ourselves in line with them. Some of the stories in scripture are inspiring and present wonderful patterns, while others are despicable and are there for a warning. We see an example of this in Judges 21:25 at a time when, “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” Many of the stories in Judges communicate the penalty for failing to pass along the knowledge of God from one generation to the next.

From the example in Numbers 1:18-19, we see a model for how to think of children and of the dynamic legacy they can leave. Two things jump out at us from this story in Numbers. First, these children were good enough historians that they were able to recite their ancestry. This is in sharp contrast to our age of extreme individualism, where most people can only think as far back as their grandparents.

This should instruct us not to be so individualistic and contemporary. We are better off if we look back to our genealogical heritage and the content that it has delivered to us in the form of “the dark sayings of old,” and the “parables of old” that “our fathers told us.”

Second, notice how this illustrates the tremendous latent power that existed in families. It is startling to read of the many thousands of warriors produced by these families – in some cases there were 30,000 -75,000 fighting men.

This is an important point, because it shows us the significance that God places on remembering family history. Ex 12;26 tells us of a time in Israel when fathers DID tell their children,

26 And it shall be, when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 that you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and delivered our households.’” So the people bowed their heads and worshiped. 28 Then the children of Israel went away and did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.”

However, salvation is not guaranteed. A man may tell the stories of the greatness of God, but it will not guarantee that his children will turn to the Lord. That does not change the command to speak, but it should give fathers a realistic understanding of what may happen. Matthew Henry speaks of Hezekiah’s experience,

“It is the duty of parents to possess their children with a confidence in the truth of God, which will go far towards keeping them close to the ways of God. Hezekiah, doubtless, did this himself, and yet Manasseh his son walked not in his steps. Parents may give their children many good things, good instructions, good examples, good books, but they cannot give them grace.[1]

Fathers are God’s appointed historians. I was a history major in college but you don’t need a BA in History to be a historian for your family. You only need to know your Bible… and communicate the rich contours of the history of the world from God’s perspective. Don’t let your children leave home without it.

John 3:1-8 brings us the central truth of the Gospel – the necessity of the new birth. When Jesus said, “You must be born again.” He was referring to a miracle in the heart that transforms everything. Jesus makes it clear to Nicodemus that his morality and his respectability were worthless – he must be born again.

]]>http://scottbrownonline.com/born-from-above/feed/0Let’s Hear It for the Small Churchhttp://scottbrownonline.com/lets-hear-it-for-the-small-church/
http://scottbrownonline.com/lets-hear-it-for-the-small-church/#commentsWed, 07 Mar 2018 12:38:30 +0000http://scottbrownonline.com/?p=35126

Steve Wittmer has written a wonderful article on some of the blessed things small churches experience in, The Secret Small Churches Know Best.” I really loved reading this article. Please read all of it… And, savor the last paragraph as I did.

He sets the stage with these opening lines,

“Most Christian churches in America are small. In 2012, the National Congregations Study found that the median Sunday morning attendance for churches in the United States was 75 people. The study also found that 43% of American churches had fewer than 50 regular participants, 67% had fewer than 100 regular participants, and 87% had fewer than 250.”

After explaining some of the remarkable and even humbling things small churches experience, here is how he ends the article,

“Will you receive the manifest weakness and fragility of your church as a gift from God? Will it make your little congregation willing to lean on Christ, and hide yourself “under his wing?” Your church (and every church, everywhere) will eternally impact people, not by showing them how big and impressive you are, but by showing them the greatness of the God who says, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6).”

In Psalm 78:4-8, Asaph sets an example for all fathers to be teachers when says, “We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done. For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children

Note the gravity and importance of the tone: “He established a testimony in Jacob, He appointed a law in Israel.” He is speaking here of A LAW that needs to be followed. It is an ancient law. However, it is for contemporary use. What is this “law in Israel’ he is referring to? It is the law in Deut. 6:1-9, which commands fathers to teach their children in the way that Deuteronomy 6:1-9 describes.

It is clear from Psalm 78, that from the time of Moses to the time of David, Deuteronomy 6 remained the central manner for the discipleship of the next generation. It is timeless discipleship methodology. Asaph believes that the commands in Deuteronomy 6 are critical.

Training the trainer

A faithful father not only teaches his offspring, but he also has his eye on teaching his son so that he can teach the children yet to be born. This means that he is training a trainer. He is training a leader who will train another leader who is not yet on the scene. Even though his grandchildren are not yet born, he is has an agenda. He is training a father to be a trainer.

Fathers are not only trainers of their children, but they are trainers of trainers. Not only are they delivering the law of God to their sons, but they are training their sons to teach the law as well. This requires two different kinds of teaching: the teaching itself, and the teaching of the teacher to teach.

Generational thinking generates the right activity

In our culture, fathers consider themselves “free” when their children turn eighteen years old. They believe that their child-raising responsibility has ended at this magic age. This is not a biblical idea. Instead of quitting the child-raising responsibility when children enter into adulthood, the Lord reminds fathers that they have only just begun. When their children become adults and have children of their own, they have more responsibility, not less. They don’t need the most prestigious teaching credential. They need the most credible textbook – the Bible.

During the chapel service at Southern Seminary on Feb 22, 2018, Seminary President Albert Mohler made the following statement, correcting the modern church for its practice of removing children from the worship of God in the churches,

“Wherever children are be found they are to be welcomed by Christ’s people. Christ’s people are to be more welcoming than anyone else to children. Our churches should not be places where adults cannot wait to put the children away in order to get to the adult tasks of worship. One of the scandals of so much evangelicalism is that we send people to their rooms as soon as we get to church.

Now, I’m not arguing against the utility of a nursery for infants. I’m not arguing against the appropriateness of special programs to teach children.

I am saying that when you look at a church and you look at a congregation you should see the congregation. You should see young people. You should see young couples. You should see older couples and older people. You should see those coming into the final season of their life and you should see those in the beginning season of their life. You should see people sitting in pews who’s feet cannot touch the floor. And we should, in church, welcome the wiggling and the squirming, and we should hope that what is happening is that the Word of God is reaching those hearts in ways those children do not even recognize. They are speaking as children, they are thinking as children, they are reasoning as children but the Word of God can reach where we cannot go. It is one of the ordinary means of grace that our children, in church with us, will hear the Word of God, and sing the songs, sing the hymns, hear the music before they can sing it. In order that they, at the right time might find their voice.”

Here is the story of the tragic loss of the presence of God in the hearts of those who continued lifelessly in their religious activities. We find Jesus at Passover chasing the money changers out of the Temple and declaring that the temple of His body will be destroyed and raised up in three days. This is a story about the temple of God and what it means. But why did Jesus act with such vehemence and violence? The answer to this question lies in the meaning of the Temple which is disclosed not only here in John 2:13-25, but also from Genesis to Revelation.

Here is the story of the tragic loss of the presence of God in the hearts of those who continued lifelessly in their religious activities. We find Jesus at Passover chasing the money changers out of the Temple and declaring that the temple of His body will be destroyed and raised up in three days. This is a story about the temple of God and what it means. But why did Jesus act with such vehemence and violence? The answer to this question lies in the meaning of the Temple which is disclosed not only here in John 2:13-25, but also from Genesis to Revelation.